User:Slaunger/Valuable Images

Valued Images Proposal

I propose to introduce a new class of Valued Images (VI) on Commons to supplement the existing Featured Pictures (FP) and Quality Images (QI) systems.

FPs are the cream of the crop at Commons and in principle reserved for images of extraordinary value and technical quality. Candidates are evaluated in a lengthy voting procedure. By requiring a 2/3 majority vote only the best of the best pass through. About 0.05% of the images at Commons has the FP stamp on them. Due to the voting procedure it is mostly aesthetically pleasing images which gets promoted and are used as Picture Of The Day and for the show room to attract interest and users.

QI emphasizes the technical quality of the images and provides a forum for recognizing users who contribute with images of high technical quality. Candidates are reviewed in a fast and lightweight review process, where a single review by another user is often sufficient. Using the feedback from the reviewers the contributors often get hints on how to improve their contributions, which is fruitful.

My idea with the VIs is complementary to the QIs. A VI is highly valuable for other Wikimedia projects, putting a lower emphasis on the technical quality.

Draft guideline, and test candidate list

This proposal exists as a draft guideline and candidate list here. Final adjustments will be done there.

VI criteria

I propose the following criteria shall be met for an image to become VI:

1. The contribution is (at the time of nomination) the most valuable illustration of its kind on Wikimedia Commons and must have an educational or informative content. Note that most valuable does not necessarily imply the one of the best technical quality. Examples: Most valuable image of
   1. Visually distinct plant or animal species
      1. There can be more than one VI of each species as long as it demonstrates different and relevant aspects of the species. Examples: This photo of a male frog and this photo of two frogs mating photos shows different relevant aspect of the well known Common Frog. A head and body photo of an animal may also be considered distinct in showing different aspects of the species as long as the different views have a clearly illustrative point.
      2. Not all unique species photos are sufficiently valuable to become VI. For instance there are more than 5000 known species of Ladybird, the Coccinellidae family of beetles. Several species may look so similar on a photo that it is impossible to identify the species based on a photo alone. This is where a good photo or illustration on a higher taxa, e.g., genus may be more valuable. In such cases illustrations detailing the specifics of each species are often more valuable than photos.
   2. Visually distinct types/aspects of objects.
   3. A location of interest
   4. A historic or rare event
   5. A portrait of a notable person
   6. A diagram of process or object
   7. A map for a certain region, location.
      1. Different types of maps for the same region (historical, geological, topographical, etnographical etc.) can be considered of different kinds
   8. Current usage on other Wikimedia projects.
      1. An indication of the value of an image is its current use in Wikimedia project content pages (excluding COM:QI, COM:QIC, COM:FP, COM:FPC, user pages, and related pages). If the image is used in several other Wikimedia projects already it can be an indicator of value, especially when it has been added to other Wikimedia projects by independent users.
      2. It is not a requirement that an image is used on other Wikimedia projects to become VI. It may have been uploaded recently and not yet discovered by the relevant Wikimedia editors. On the contrary, one of the purposes of VI is to promote hitherto overlooked images.
2. The image shall illustrate its subject well
   1. No distracting irrelevant elements (can be mitigated if it is hard to re-establish the scenario)
   2. Reasonable lightning, composition and angle of view
   3. The image must look good in size 480x360 pixels (or 170k pixels for other aspect ratios). This makes it well suited for illustrating on-line content such as all other Wikimedia projects. This is also the size which shall be used when reviewing the photo.
   4. The technical quality which is achievable by the built-in camera in a modern mobile phone is good enough for non-historic images.
3. The image shall be informative
   1. The image page uses the {{Information}} template (or suitable variations) and all relevant fields are used in the template.
      1. An informative full sentence description describing what the image depicts, and auxilliary information of relevance for the photo. Descriptions should use the appropriate language templates, e.g., |description={{da|Denne beskrivelse er på dansk.}} Having an English description is preferred.
   2. The image page is well categorized. It may also be added to relevant gallery/galleries with at least one category (to avoid placement in the {{uncat}} collection) and that at least one category is linked to actual content (i.e., User Galleries do not seem to be for that purpose).
   3. The image is geocoded, when relevant. Exceptions:
      1. Illustrations, diagrams and maps
      2. Studio shots
      3. Endangered species or species, which are rare on the location. In this case some coarse location (e.g., regional) information shall be given in the description field
      4. Privacy concerns
4. Candidates are reviewed in a lightweight process similar to QI candidates
5. A VI can also be an FP and/or a QI.
6. Delisting. Currently two schemes are being discussed:
   1. Once a VI, always a VI, even if later superseded by a better VI. This is the same as for QIs. This is to keep the resources used on VI low. Better to use the energy on contributing than delisting circuitry.
   2. An existing VI can be delisted to "Former VI" status. This can occur during a "Most Valuable Review", where an existing VI competes with another Image for VI status. The outcome of this review can be one of the following
      1. The reviewers find that the two images competing for VI actually illustrates different kinds of a subject. That means the original VI keeps its VI status. The other image obtains/keeps its VI status if the reviewers finds it is good enough at illustrating a different valuable aspect of the subject.
      2. The reviewers find the two images illustrates the same aspect of a subject. In this case the image with most support gets or retains its VI status. That is, if the "new" candidate is preferred, the old VI changes it state to "Former VI" and the new image gets VI status and vice versa.
7. An image can be nominated by any Commons user.
8. The contributor and/or nominator cannot vote in the reviewing process.
9. All images on Commons can be nominated, not only images contributed by Commons users.
10. Several images can be nominated as a Valued Image Set (VIS).
    1. A set of images, which illustrates a process are good candidates for VIS. Examples: a vulcano erupting, aging, building a bridge, baking a cake, before-after images, stages in pregnancy).
    2. The images in a set can have (in principle) have different creators and uploaders.
    3. When promoted, each image gets a VIS tag with links to other images in the set.
    4. There has to be a clear line in the images, which makes them stand out as a set. For instance, all historic panoramic images of London taken in different directions, at different locations, at different times of the day and year certainly does not qualify for VIS. It is too messy and does not add much more value than each individual image. A set of images taken from approximately the same location with approximately similar headings and other conditions are more likely to be promoted as VIS.
11. An image if often valuable for many users even if it cannot be promoted to VI. Value depends on the user. A domain specialist may find very high value in non-VI domain-specific images. This merely reflects different points-of-views and not an error in judgement. VI promotions are subjective, thus the name Valued Image (by the Commoners). A promotion to VI reflects a recommendation for use in Wikimedia projects by the Commons community, nothing else.

The purpose of VIs

The purpose of introducing VIs are many-fold

1. The VIs will provide repository users a convenient entrance to high value material for use in other Wikimedia projects
2. The VIs will encourage contributions of new topics needed in Wikimedia projects
3. The VIs will motivate contributors who has done an effort in contributing images of difficult subjects which are impossible/very hard to get in FP technical quality
4. Many users complain about the FP process and its preference for beauty and technically flawless images over exceptional value. In protest several contributors of high value content has left the community. I think this is a great loss. Users will have a new forum where their they can get feedback/recognition on their valuable contributions without having to bother about techie details, which only 1% of regular users notice.
5. The normal 2 Mpixel requirement is often criticized for being irrelevant for on-line content, which, after all is where the Commons images are most often used.
6. Contributors will be encouraged to put more effort into the proper description, location, and categorization of their contributions thus improving the value of the contributions and increasing the chances that other repository users can find the images again.
7. The VI candidates forum can be an entertaining place, where reviewers may learn quite a lot about new domains and types of images not dealt with previously at the Quality images candidates and Featured pictures candidates

Examples: What is a VI and what is not?

The examples section has been moved to here, where the use of a preliminary {{VIC}} template is also demonstrated. Please add more examples and discuss the current examples in that namespace.

What do you think?

I am interested in hearing opinions from all types of Commons users regarding this proposal. Please use the talk page for comments. Feel free to make minor obvious improvements to the proposal, add further examples and comments to the exmples on this page. I prefer if more dramatic changes are discussed on the talk page first. -- Slaunger 20:59, 7 January 2008 (UTC)